Girl in da Hoodie

Hello there! Last post of the month! I hope you are doing well and are ready for July tomorrow! Wow - its been a bit of a whirlwind month - and next month is going to be busy too!

My girls are both taking part in a play on the 8th and 9th of July -

Not the best picture but you get the idea - Lucy is Little Red Hoodie and Penny is a 'Heavie'....

This is one piece of scenery that I finished painting this evening - I'm very pleased with this - it measures around 8ft square! 

I hope we can drum up some support - the chldren have all worked so very hard!

Big hugs

Rachel xx

alice stamp playtime at coffeepot.

Hello lovelies - well its a funny day today in our house - my little girls are both packed up and ready to go on a school residential today - they're off to Malham Youth Hostel for two nights and I won't see them until Friday 3.30! Whatever am I to do? Craft seems to be the answer.

I am sharing with you today my makes from coffeepot on monday - I took the visible image stamps of Alice in wonderland to play with - and about 20 different stencils - virtually all clarity. The ladies had a great time playing - these are my makes.

Here's all three - I made the white rabbit one as inspiration - the cheshire cat as a demo and then the alice one.

The process was the same each time - stamp, mask, stencil, reveal, colour then add extra details.

I think this needs more colour!

My favourite - the white rabbit is brilliant!

Time for an update on my kitchen - the floor is down, the ceiling and lights are done - the cupboards are mostly in - it looks like this ...

so we have progress - but plenty more to be done yet!!! I'll update again soon!

Have a great wednesday!

Hugs

Rachel x

Circus ATC swap

Hello there lovelies! How are you? I hope you are well. I'm not sure about whats happening here today - visiting mum or swimming - I know I'll be running the school library this afternoon but thats as far as it goes.

Today I want to show my ATC swaps from last month - I haven't received my 4 back yet (I don't think???)but I can at least show you the 4 I made. Perhaps I had better check in my ATC drawers.

I used a stamp and die set from Tim Holtz that I acquired at Countryview Crafts. 

Here's a close up - the background was made using a clarity stencil and distress inks. The images were coloured using distress pens. 

I hope you have a happy Tuesday!

Hugs

Rachel x

oh so charming!

Good morning all! I hope you are well and happy. Did you have a good weekend? I hope so. We had a relatively quiet Sunday - I enjoyed spending the day with my girls and doing stuff like swimming and shopping. It was nice to be together. Its lovely that they're growing up but I need to hold on to these times as they'll be grown up and flown before I know it!

Today I want to share a make I did for the June cardswap at Joanna Sheen - the theme was Oh so charming and I made a sewing themed card with a scissor charm.

The background was created using victorian velvet distress ink and Indigo Blu stamps. I used aged mahogany distress to colour the back panel and added the stamped images. 

It is a pretty simple card - but as usual I was running out of time! The time stealing pixies are definitely at work here at the moment!!! 

I hope you have a good Monday and I will probably see you here tomorrow - I may even take a few kitchen pics today as there has been progress - not as much as I'd like but a little!!

Big hugs

Rachel x

christmas card Club - cute

Good morning all! Well believe it or not time has rolled around to Christmas Card Club again and the theme for this fortnight was cute. Well I'm not much into cute these days but I thoroughly enjoyed the 30 mins it took me to make these two cards! The stamp is a very old one from LOTV and the stencil is from Clarity. The sentiment stamp is from Chocolate Baroque.

I used evergreen bough with the stencil and coloured the image in distress pens - I used wilted violet, broken china, tea dye and ground expresso.

I'm rather pleased with these little cuties!

Thanks to Sylvie for coming up with the topic!

I had a good day yesterday - in the morning we had a fundraiser for the Drama group and managed to raise around £180. I also had a table selling my cards and took about £40 which is brilliant! I was well chuffed! In the afternoon we went to see my mum and dad. Dad was quite smiley which was lovely to see. My uncle (mums brother) was also visiting us from Lincolnshire and he had brought his son (my cousin) and his family up with him. They're currently over from Austin, Texas. It was lovely to see David again - I hadn't seen him for 17 years so it was great to catch up. We went out to Happy Mount Park in Morecambe in the afternoon - the children all had lots of fun.

Lots of fun!!!

Hope you have a great Sunday - we're hoping to have a relaxed day!!!

Big Huggles!

Rachel xx

Mums Birthday present

Hello there! How are you? I hope you are well. I had a lovely afternoon tea with my mum on her birthday yesterday. We went out to the Midland Hotel in Morecambe -

 Afternoon tea was very yummy ... those smoked salmon sandwiches were fabulous and I love d the lemon tart too!   

 This is in my mums living room - she's showing off the flowers I got for her from my dad.

I think she had a good day under the circumstances - I am sure it wasn't perfect but I did my very best to make it as nice as possible!

I made her a birthday present too - mum loves the sea and she asked for one of the die cut storage units from Clever Cuts - so I got one and made it up for her. I decorated it using Graphics 45 papers.

I'm pleased to report mum liked it!

Its a pretty simple make but time was very limited! The papers speak for themselves anyway!

Wishing you a great day.

Big hugs

Rachel x

Mums Birthday!

Good Morning! Its my lovely mums birthday today - happy birthday mum! We are going out for afternoon tea at the Midland Hotel - its a fabulous Art Deco hotel on the seafront at Morecambe - I'll take some pics so you can see tomorrow how things went!

I want to show you the card I made for my dad to give to mum - I know she will have opened it by the time she reads this so I'm safe. Here's what I made:

Mum adores poppies - this is a giant poppy stamp from Indigo Blu. I stamped it in red archival and coloured in dried marigold distress pen. I used a black soot distress pen in the centre. The leaves were coloured in peeled paint distress pen. I also added some limor circles around the edges aswell as some twisted citron distress ink around the edges, The sentiment is also from Indigo Blu.

Hope you like it mum - I'll be there soon!

Big Hugs

Rachel xx

Coffee Pot - Wonky Tonks again!

Hello there! Thanks so much for your comments on my last two DT posts - you are very kind and I really do appreciate you taking the time to leave your thoughts - thankyou!

Things are all happening here - I am having my kitchen ripped out all ready for a new one going in - this was the scene on Monday evening ...

Glorious eh? I'll take some more later today when the main guts of the kitchen have been put in - hopefully!!!

On Monday I was on duty at coffeepot - I decided to take my wonky tonks along and let the ladies play - they loved the stamps and I know Diana will be buying some! Here's what I actually made during the session which was very relaxed.

I mixed two sets together here - but I do like the result ...

I carried through the Tracy Easson words around the head.

I will be trying these girls with mixed media designs soon - I do love them so very much!!

Things are not brilliant with my dad - he's still with us but has a very poor quality of life. Its awful to see him - and its so heartbreaking for my mum. Life can be so hard at times can't it?

Have a great day whatever it is you're doing.

Big Hugs ...

Rachel x

Let your imagination fly

Hello there! How are you? I hope you are well and happy! Well this is my final post for my guest design slot with Chocolate Baroque. I feel very happy to have had this opportunity and thank Lesley very much. I have made a 3D piece using a Tando Creative Birdhouse kit.

I started the piece by painting it with acrylic paint and once dry I used the chocolatebaroque rustic-fragments-rubber-stamps to add detail to the house and roof.

Next I stamped and fussy cut the birds from the chocolatebaroque fly-away-with-me rubber-stamp-sheet - I had to use a brayer trick to reverse one of the smaller birds. I wanted it to look as though they were talking to each other. 

I stuck the birds on then added the foliage which was part of the original kit. I also stamped the flowers which were part of the chocolatebaroque birdcage-collage-stamp.

On the back I added part  of the sentiment from the Fly away with me rubber stamp sheet.

Here's a closer look at the flowers.

I hope you have enjoyed this post!

See you again soon!

Hugs

Rachel xx

Teal and brown at Indigo Blu

Hello there! How are you today? I hope you are both well and happy. There's a new challenge starting over at Indigo blu today and the theme is teal and brown - love that colour combo. I hope you do too and will be able to join in with us - you might be a lucky winner!

Here's what I made:

Oh I did enjoy making this card - infact this is what I spent the morning of my birthday doing earlier this month. The card was for a friend who used to be my boss when I was a chemistry teacher. She loved it too! I used stamps from the following sets by Indigo Blu and other indigo blu goodies:

chemistry-lab-a5-red-rubber-stamp-by-kay-halliwell-sutton

periodic-table-a6-red-rubber-stamp-by-kay-halliwell-sutton

floral-fantasy-a5-red-rubber-stamp-by-kay-halliwell-sutton

indigoblu-stencils-c51/stencil-roses

Lost family postcards

english-cottage-artists-acrylic-paint-townhouse-teal

I started by adding grungepaste through the rose stencil and when dry painting with townhouse teal.I then stamped on this in both brown and teal. The PT was stamped in sepia and coloured up in distress inks. 

I added the lace and the photo and then stamped and fussycut the butterflies and the conical flask with flowers,

I do hope you will be able to join us at Indigo Blu Challenge this month - all you need to do is follow the theme and use brown and teal!

Big hugs

Rachel x

Wonky Tonks first play

Hello all - how are you? Its been a busy day here - 4 and 1/2 hours setting up at the fair, doing the teas and then helping clear up .... followed by a rush to take the girls to jujitsu and then back to the village for a vintage fair - I was helping put on a stall - but that wasn't a hardship as there wasn't a lot of business! I'm ready for my bed tonight and looking forward to seeing my dad tomorrow - its fathers day and I suspect this may be the last time I can celebrate with my dad. Although I use the term celebrate very loosely. He seems to be continuing his decline. He now has a hospital bed at home and carers coming in four times a day. Hospice at home are also visiting regularly. Its all a help to my mum who has a lot to deal with. Such a sad and fast decline. I hope he has a good day.

Last weekend when I was away at Teeside I managed to have a quick play with three of the lovely new Wonky Tonk stamp sets from Tracy Easson - here's my makes:

A trio of CAS cards

wonky tonk Francesca

Wonky tonk Sophia

Wonky Tonk Georgina

Here's a close up of Georgina - I have added the writing on this.

All colouring was done using spectrum aqua markers. 

I am so very pleased that these beautiful girls have been made into stamps - well done Tracy!!!

Have a great evening and a wonderful day tomorrow!!

Big hugs

Rachel xx

Riikka Workshop 3: Heart of Turisas was forged by the winds

Hello there - well this is the result of my third and final workshop - sadly I needed to get home so couldn't do the Sunday pm workshop. But this is the project that turned my head in the first place - and also the one that I loved most of all.



This is Riikkas project - it was even more stunning in the flesh - and here's what I made:

Here's how it started ..

more progress ...

I decided I really wanted to use both halves of the polystyrene heart - to make this piece a tribute to my late husband Shaun. So I did - I think it has made the whole thing very busy but I do love it.

Here's a more arty shot to try and give more of a feel of the dimension. 

It was such a wonderful class - I loved it. 

And if you're wondering - the name of the class comes from a song by Riikka's favourite metal band!!!! She even played us a clip!

Big hugs and hopes for a wonderful day!

Rachel xx